CUP (2016) h/b 516pp £74.99 (ISBN 9781107168503)
This is a work of dense scholarship, whose contents might have been more helpfully described if the subtitle had been Explorations of Context, rather than the other way round. As C. says in his (useful) first chapter, ‘Introductory: Contexts and its Loss’, he aims ‘to restore as far as possible the lost or obscured contexts (often ‘pointe’ in C.) of the epigrams studied and thus arrive at more plausible interpretations of them’. He goes on to list the numerous methods and resources—25 or so—called upon in the course of the book. In total, C. looks at about 100 epigrams, listed in Contents under 14 generic headings (e.g. ‘Philosophical’, ‘Afterlives’, ‘Literary Polemics’, ‘Epitaphs’, ‘Temples and Shrines’, ‘The Erotic’, ‘Generic Innovation’, ‘Learning’ etc.) with appropriate references to the Anthologia Palatina, and in very many cases to the three commentaries of A.S.F. Gow and D.L. Page: thus, for example, under ‘Afterlives’, we find ‘Callimachus AP 7.524 =31 H(ellenistic) E(pigrams)’. It should go without saying that the well-equipped reader will have the five volumes of W.R. Paton’s (ancient) Loeb Library edition as well as the three volumes of Gow-Page to hand. Peter Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria is also called upon, and the many epigrams found on inscriptions receive full attention here in the chapter headed ‘Speakers, Addressees, Antecedents’.
C.’s approach can be well demonstrated by the epigram mentioned above. The traditional wayfarer (often hodoiporos in epigrams) engages in dialogue with a tombstone and its occupant Charidas in six lines of quick-fire dialogue; he learns the name of the deceased, his ethnic, and his patronymic, and then the disheartening news that Hades offers ‘much darkness’, no prospect of rebirth, and that Pluto is a myth. All this is ‘true’, but if the wayfarer wants ‘soft soap’, then (says the deceased—or does he?—in a very puzzling phrase), an ‘ox can be bought cheaply in Hades’, it being a common trope that goods in Hades are cheap. C. looks at all this carefully: the deceased comes from Cyrene—but is presumably buried elsewhere, probably Alexandria—which helps to explain why Callimachus was commissioned by the father. However, the beliefs expressed about the afterlife are puzzling: might there be a connexion with the Cynics? Or even with ‘the atheist’ Theodorus of Cyrene? Or may there be significance in the fact that the name of the dead man’s father, Arimmas, while certainly Cyrenaean, also has a Jewish connexion, thus leading to the possibility of Jewish influence? (This idea is explored in depth by C.). Or are simply conventional attitudes to the afterlife being challenged, via an idiosyncratic mode of self-consolation for the bereaved father? At all events, the epigram remains ‘unique in its time as a public statement’. C. goes on to argue that, in the last line, the word normally treated as meaning a coin of low value (pellaion, in the genitive case), may actually mean one of high value, to give a witty and paradoxical conclusion. One can only say that some of the possibilities adduced and dismissed by Gow-Page are even less plausible.
While it is impracticable to look at every section, C. takes the same meticulous approach throughout. More palatable may be C’.s examination of a number of epigrams involving literary polemics—especially by Asclepiades, Dioscorides, Philip and the Antipaters (of Sidon and Thessalonica)—in which C. teases out the ways in which these poets express opposition to (? the commanding position of) Callimachus and others by ‘devious, witty and ironic’ exploitations of their various opponents’ terminology: Posidippus, by contrast, appears not to be one of the obscure ‘Telchines’ attacked by Callimachus, but rather to stress Callimachean/Philetan ideals. Of their nature, C.’s investigations, convincing as their conclusions are, and often making for fascinating reading, are necessarily detailed and technical, and do not lend themselves to succinct summary (obviously, Greek is a requirement). It is hard not to feel that those epigrammatists who attack Callimachus, directly or, more than once, via attacks on the race of grammarians, are in fact envious of him.
C. tells us that no monograph, however extensive, could offer more than a partial view of the richness and variety of Hellenistic epigram. C.’s claim to have investigated the ‘social, political, cultic, ethnic, onomastic, local, topographical and patronage contexts of individual epigrams’, while giving full attention to their ‘literary, linguistic and philological contexts’, is fully justified, and the reader of this distinguished offering is certain to learn much that s/he did not know before. Expensive the book may seem, but not for the lanx satura which C. has provided on so generous a scale. Naturally, there is a full bibliography and useful Indexes. However, just as in the Alps one sometimes sees the warning ‘Only for the most experienced skiers’, the same, mutatis mutandis, is true here. And given the frequently arcane vocabulary of the A.P., readers are advised to keep their LSJ close by.
Colin Leach